Alive, alive oh!

 Single scarlet.
Red Flower Carpet Roses

I must always remember that my garden is alive. It's a living, growing thing, with moods that change, whims that come and go, not to mention wind and weather and four seasons. After each day everything has been alive for a little longer. This is why I'm always seeing new things that need doing.

Today I decided to do a quick lickedy-split clean up of one of my less-visited garden areas. Aargh! For every one thing I chose to 'do', I saw ten other things nearby that needed doing as well. And for each of these ten things, ten more - exponential gardening! This had the potential to send me to my gloomy place. Until I realised what the problem was. And why there wasn't actually a real problem at all, only the one in my head. Until I had my 'living garden' revelation.

Armed with this new insight (I've never thought of my garden in this way before) and some lunch I felt so much better. Out I went to scoop up more trimmings, and pot up basil and daisy seedlings. I've got some ideas for nice, creative things to do - like shifting some sad roses into the Allotment Garden, and moving some flowering Pelargoniums into pots for the cottage. Let plants be where they'll most enjoy it, flowers where they can be seen every day. And no more talk of this gloomy place, thank you very much.

Now it's time to put on the watering hoses. The day is turning super-hot, too hot to even visualise a sharp spade, some serious digging, kneeling, scraping and pulling. The practicalities of improving the Dog-Path Garden (which prompted my revelation) can wait.

Thursday 18th January

Not only is my garden alive, it is also an honest garden. It may be scruffy, covered in gum tree leaves, but it is living in the summery moment. And oh so flowery! I love the apricots and oranges - Crepuscule roses re-blooming, and the species daylilies in full flower. There are some wonderfully bright pinks and good reds. Yeay for my assorted (and sometimes, in winter, annoying) scatterings of red dahlias. They don't pale into insignificance when the summer sun glares down.

I worked really hard today. I watered and trimmed and planted those roses. I spread delightful concoctions of rotted horse manure and equally rotted wood chips all around. I bucketed water on the Pittosporums, and when the sun became just too hot for me I did some more water race weeding. Oops. Found yet more tiddly Gunnera seedlings, and decided to ignore them. Let's see if I like them when they grow bigger, hee hee...

 Lolling on the decking.
Tiger the Cat

Friday 19th January

And now my garden is even more alive - with lots of new wriggling worms, via the hugest dump and spread of rotted horse manure ever known - in this garden, at least! Thirteen bags full, plus eight barrow loads of rotted wood chips, lovingly put on the Allotment Garden to build up the soil and enrich the life of the roses therein.

Then I went off in the car to pay my friend-supplier and return the bags. Naturally, I've asked her for more. So for at least half a day there will be no outstanding horse manure to apply. The worms amaze me - within five minutes of being plopped on top of the garden they've dived for cover.